The present disclosure relates generally to information handling systems, and more particularly to data security for a high bandwidth bus.
As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option is an information handling system (IHS). An IHS generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements may vary between different applications, IHSs may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in IHSs allow for IHSs to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, IHSs may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
PCI EXPRESS is a high bandwidth input/output (I/O) interface or data bus that may be incorporated in IHS computer platforms. Because of its high speed capabilities, PCI EXPRESS is often used in graphics and multimedia streaming data applications. However, PCI EXPRESS is not an encrypted bus and does not provide security for the streamed data, which becomes vulnerable to devices that can snoop the bus and uncover the data.
Because of the high bandwidth and high performance requirements of the PCI EXPRESS bus and other I/O busses like it, the logic and/or encryption required to provide data security would be very complex and prohibitively expensive.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide a way to provide security for streaming data over an unencrypted bus absent the disadvantages found in the prior methods discussed above.